Vatican prelate defends abortion for 9-year-old

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- An influential prelate said Brazilian
doctors didn't deserve excommunication for aborting the twin
fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was allegedly raped by her
stepfather because the doctors were saving her life.

The statement by Archbishop Rino Fisichella in the Vatican
newspaper Sunday was highly unusual because church law mandates
automatic excommunication for abortion. Fisichella, who heads the
Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, also upheld the church's ban
on abortion and any implications of his criticism of
excommunicating the doctors and the girl's mother weren't
clear.

Fisichella argued for a sense of "mercy" in such cases and
respect for the Catholic doctors' wrenching decision, and strongly
criticized fellow churchmen who singled out the doctors and mother
for public condemnation.

"Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and
urgent to save her innocent life and bring her back to a level of
humanity of which we men of the church should be expert and masters
in proclaiming," Fisichella wrote.

The doctors, Fisichella noted, had said the child's life was in
danger if the pregnancy continued.

"How should one act in these cases? An arduous decision for the
doctor and for moral law itself," Fisichella wrote, urging respect
for the inner "conflict" that the Catholic doctors must have
suffered before deciding on the abortion.

Earlier this month, the archbishop of Recife, where the child
and her family lives, made a public announcement about the
excommunication, which is the church's most severe penalty.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, a top Vatican official, has
supported the archbishop.

But Fisichella criticized the archbishop's public denunciation,
writing that the girl "should have been above all defended,
embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all
on her side, all of us, without distinction."

Fisichella stressed that abortion is always "bad." But he said
the quick proclamation of excommunication "unfortunately hurts the
credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as
insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy."

The Vatican teaches that anyone performing or helping someone to
have an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the church,
and the Vatican prelate underlined that abortion is "always
condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act."

"There wasn't any need, we contend, for so much urgency and
publicity in declaring something that happens automatically,"
Fisichella wrote.

Writing as if he were addressing the girl, Fisichella said:
"There are others who merit excommunication and our pardon, not
those who have allowed you to live and have helped you to regain
hope and trust."

Abortion is generally illegal in Brazil, which is home to more
Catholics than any other nation. But the procedure is allowed when
the mother's life is in danger, when the fetus has no chance of
survival or in rape cases where the woman has not passed her 20th
week of pregnancy.

Doctors said the girl was 15 weeks pregnant when the abortion
was performed. Health officials said the life of the girl -- who
weighs 80 pounds -- was in danger.

The pregnancy was discovered when the girl fell ill and her
mother took her to a clinic. The child then told officials she had
been abused by her stepfather, who is in police custody.